Bastard Child of Guilt and Shame
by arsenickiss221
Summary: Danny runs from a broken home to a broken life on the streets, drugs and sex his only solace from his scramble of a life. That is until the tightrope he's been stumbling across breaks. TW: Drugs, Sex, Angst, Violent Sex, Homophobia, Self Destruction.


The first time Danny sucks off a dealer in a back alley for drugs, it's almost too easy, he thinks. Ten minutes of work for a gram and couple clean needles. Yeah, it's messy and dirty, leaving scrapes on his knees and an aching in the back of his throat, but he can still use the money he makes working in retail for his share of the rent without worrying about the effects of crashing. Crashing made things terribly difficult. Heroin made things terribly easy. With heroin, he doesn't feel the ghosts of his father's hands upon his throat, striking his face. He doesn't hear his mother whispering to him from beyond the grave. He doesn't feel much of anything except pure light radiating from his core and extending to his fingertips.

He swallows jaggedly and stalks back into the bar, shooting down a whiskey to mask the salt in his mouth, kissing one of the men largely on the lips so that he would put it on his tab. Danny stalks to the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He pulls an old cigarette filter out of his pocket and a clean needle and sets about preparing a solution.

Danny doesn't think anything can beat the surge of heroin crashing through his veins.

He hooks up with the man that he kissed at the bar later, snagging thirty dollars from his wallet as he leaves his swanky apartment, bruises forming along the back of his neck from being shoved face first into the floor, rug burns on his arms. It was fine. No one treats their whore well.

* * *

At night sometimes, when his heroin daze mixes with the beginnings of dreams, Danny thinks of his mother, of her pressing his hand against the side of his face, smoothing his hair, kissing his temple and telling him everything would be okay. What would she think now, Danny wondered? Would she be concerned, worried, would she care for him while he got better, calm him when he got the shakes, help him through withdrawal? Or would she disown his ass just like his father had disowned him after catching him with his English teacher?

It didn't matter, Danny would eventually conclude, she was gone anyways, eaten from the inside out by her own malignant and black cells. If the thought would still nag at him, he'd just prick himself in the arm again. Her face would dissolve away.

* * *

One night Danny is at a club in Soho when he feels hands tracing their way across his body. He turns around, eyes twitching slightly from the E he had dry swallowed ten minutes ago. "Just wondering what such a tight ass is doing still in those jeans."

The man in front of him is angular and sharp, with long black hair tossed across an undercut and a distinctly European, pale face. Danny is not particularly interested. Danny also doesn't particularly care.

"Well, buy me a drink and you may get to see what I look like out of the jeans."

The man's smile is low and smug, and it instantly turns Danny off. Two minutes later and a rum and coke in his hand, he finds his aversion has subsided. He shoots the rum and coke back as much as he can, closing his eyes as his ears begin to ring and he feels a rush of blood to the head. He checks his watch. Two a.m.

"Shall we go somewhere quiet?" he asks, attempting to coyly arch an eyebrow but the effect is lost from his twitching complexion. Damn the E. It's racing through his chest now, mixing with the rum, wrapping tendrils around his heartbeat causing it to beat fast and hard inside his chest, inside his ears, inside his body.

The man leads him into a cab, Danny lighting a cigarette as they exit the club, swiping his mop of hair away from his face.

The apartment is not far. Danny is offered a white powder on the apartment key as soon as the pair enters the apartment. He really shouldn't, not with E in his veins and alcohol clouding his vision, but then _he should_ because he's so close to not feeling, so close to not caring, and what happens if he pushes it a little more? Maybe he'd reach nirvana, the place between solace and death where he would find peace. He insufflates it instantly, feeling an instant rush, _cocaine_ , it mixes with the stimulants and depressants already coursing through his body. He feels his heartbeat speed up, beating faster and faster, his insides seem to be vibrating with kinetic energy, warm, expanding outwards. His face goes flush, his eyes dilate. _This is it_ , he thought, _this is it_.

Within three minutes, Danny feels his body is numb. He feels his mind is numb. Danny is numb as the man begins to bite his ear and nibble on his bottom lip. He is numb as the man whispers, "do you want to try something new?", and places handcuffs around his naked, thin wrists. Danny is numb as he is tethered to the man's bed and taken from behind, pounded into so mercilessly he doesn't know if he's screaming or moaning anymore, at least until a gag is placed into his mouth. All he knows is that it's fine, it's all fine, because this is what he deserves anyways, this is what he gets. He deserves this, all of it. And in a sick way, he enjoys it all the more because of it. It's always nice having someone treat you like the garbage you think you are.

* * *

He wanders into another bar a few days later, sopping wet from the rain pouring outside. It's a swanky bar, live entertainment, ten quid drinks, but he figures he can at least pick someone up here who has enough money that he doesn't mind taking a few from them. Rent was late and his landlord was on his ass, not to mention his roommates. Danny goes to the bar and orders a rum and coke, passing a crumpled tenner across the wooden table. He coddles the cold glass in his hand as he surveys his surroundings. Everyone around him dressed in suits, watching the avant-garde performance art before them. They all knew why he was here, what with his boyish face and secondhand clothes. Now would someone take the bait?

As he finishes his first rum and coke an elder man approaches him and buys him another. Expensive suit, white hair, wrinkles, not usually Danny's type but he doesn't complain. He's way past the point of pride anyways. He fiddles with the prepared syringe inside his coat lining. _Later_.

"Thank you," Danny mumbles as he grabs the rum and coke off the table.

"You're very welcome," the elderly man says, smiling. "It didn't seem like you had much left for another."

Danny felt the left side of his mouth torque up. "That obvious?"

"Glaringly obvious. Which left me wondering, what is this young, attractive, dare I add, man doing inside a bar such as this? Surely you aren't here for the entertainment. It's a little anachronistic, wouldn't you say?"

Danny turns towards the stage. A young queen with a bright auburn wig performed acrobatic tricks from a hoop hanging from the ceiling. She swung through, lilting her leg around the edge of the hoop, spinning around, looping her arm in and out. It was intricate, and delicate, and Danny thought it was absolutely beautiful.

"It's quite remarkable, actually," he admits. The elderly man's smile widens though it doesn't quite reach his twinkling blue eyes.

"Scottie," he says, extending a warm hand. Danny takes it.

"Danny," he mumbles back as he takes the hand, brushing his other hand through his hair. This was certainly not how he had planned his evening. Still, a lot better than getting on his knees for another gram.

"Well, Danny, would you care to join me for a chat? It's been awhile since I've had such interesting company."

Danny nods, complying. It was oddly comforting, having this normal conversation with this man, Scottie or whatever. He doesn't have to worry about trying to be sharp and witty, didn't need any raised eyebrows or innuendos. The man honestly seems to want some company, and whether or not that ended up with Danny going back to his presumably lush London estate or just walking home on the streets again, well that was up in the air.

He follows Scottie over to a table tucked away in the back corner, still nursing the rum and coke.

"So, Danny, what do you do?" Scottie asks as they sit down.

Danny runs a nervous hand through his hair, tussling it as he does. "I work in retail. Bonmarche. Yeah… it's not the best job, but it's the best I could get. I just moved here a few months ago, so, uh, it's been a bit rough trying to make ends meet in London."

Scottie leans forward, the smile still plastered on his face. "And where do you hail from, Danny?"

His throat is itching for a cigarette. "Erm, a bit out of Brighton."

"What made you leave?"

Danny lets out a bleak laugh, taking a casual swig from his glass. He swallows the hard liquor cleanly, biding for time. He taps a finger on the table. "That's not a conversation for a first meeting, Scottie."

The elder man backs off, picking up his stemmed glass of white wine. "Fair enough, we all have a right to secrecy."

The conversation skips for a bit, and Danny becomes entranced once more with the acrobat on the stage in front of them. His head is beginning to become heavy as he realizes he hadn't shot up since the morning. Should probably get around to that soon… but he can't seem to do it in front of the older man.

"Excuse me," comes a voice from behind. Danny turns to find a middle-aged, strong built man holding out a cocktail glass to him. "You seem to have left this at the bar." Danny catches the wink in his eye, understands the innuendo in the statement. He looks back to Scottie, whose bright face had suddenly become a bit stormy. He isn't really interested in Scottie, to be honest, but than again he isn't particularly interested in this other man either, and the kicked old dog look Scottie was pulling is just tugging too much at his heartstrings. Terribly sentimental habit, but the truth. Danny turns back to the middle aged man and smiles. "That's not mine, mate, but thanks."

Scottie's eyes twinkle as he turns back around. Well, Danny guesses he has chosen how his night is going to go, chatting up this old fellow who seemed nice enough. Probably has more money than the other man too, now that he thinks of it, if it came around to that.

Danny doesn't end up going home with Scottie, and the elder gentleman doesn't even hint at such a notion, instead buying Danny a couple more drinks over polite conversation before paying for a cab back to Soho.

"Here's my number," he says, handing Danny a business card. "It can always be useful to have friends in high places, even if just for a chat."

Danny pockets the card, assuming he wouldn't use it ever, before giving the man a gentle hug and climbing into the cab.

He goes to sleep without heroin that night.

* * *

The casual sex is getting rougher, and Danny isn't sure whether it's because he just is having bad luck or because he is subconsciously begging for someone to hurt him. As he rubs the bruises from fingers around his throat and the welts appearing on his back and ass, he can't help but smile. Broken skin for a broken boy. Punishment for his sins. He laughs as he shoots up in the dingy apartments afterwards, when his assailant or partner or whatever the fuck they are rolls over on the dirty mattress. His head spins, he collapses backwards, rolling underneath the sheets as heroin tendrils cascade through his system. Danny closes his eyes and laughs some more.

It's the only way to keep from falling apart.

* * *

Sometimes, as Danny sits in his apartment, pulling on a cigarette and scratching the track marks on the crook of his arm, he remembers when he first tried drugs. He had been fifteen and his best friend at the time had begun smoking pot. It had seemed like such a big deal at the time. Danny got high with him once in his backyard, hiking through the woods to get to a "safe place" where they wouldn't be caught.

He had been instantly hooked.

Danny loved the feeling of being… in descript. Undefined. Floating in a dreamscape that he no longer truly believed was reality. He was still high later when his father had hit him, and Danny had laughed because it didn't even hurt, it didn't feel real.

He'd bought a gram and a pipe a week later.

Now, as Danny sits in his cold water apartment in London, preparing a clean syringe he thinks of his friend, Andrew, and how the next summer after that it had been the weed and the Vicodin he'd bought that had taken away the sting of their dying friendship after Danny had kissed him in the same woods. Andrew had hit him then, and Danny hadn't laughed. He'd instead spent the next three days in an opiate haze, trying to hide it from his ailing mother who was on bedrest in the house.

Danny wonders now if she'd known.

He hears her whisper to him in the darkness. He responds by finding a vein and injecting.

* * *

He meets Rich by accident, one of the men he had been planning on hooking up with from the club of the night had whispered to an already-high-but-close-to-crashing Danny that he knew of a place where they could get some coke for free, and there was bound to be a party there.

Rich's flat still comes off as wealthy even with the myriad of half-drugged, half-naked men lying around it.

"And who did you bring for the _fun_ tonight, Evan?" Rich lilts as he opens the door to invite them in. Danny is beginning to feel his ecstasy wear off, and suddenly becomes _overwhelmingly_ positive that this was a bad idea. A terrible idea even, worst he's ever had. Because Rich looks like some sort of cross between a rat and a hyena gone all wrong, mixed with the teeth of a crack smoker and the greasy hair of a junkie, and Danny is beginning to feel ants crawling under his skin as Rich looks him up and down, clicking his tongue against his withering teeth.

"This is…," the blonde who had brought him looks over and grins, his pupils blown wide. "Shit I never got your name."

"Danny," he mumbles rather pathetically, scratching at his inner wrist. He fluffs his hair in front of his face. Rich grins more.

"Well, Danny, I think I have just the thing for you."

As Rich leads them deeper into the apartment, the floor already littered with people in varying stages of fucking, or already passed out, he recognizes fully what kind of place he has been led into. Some unofficial den of debauchery. He feels a black claw of worry tear at his throat, his heart beat racing for reasons that have nothing to do with ecstasy.

Rich hands him a crack pipe with some melting crystals. Danny takes a hit.

His muscles relax, everything inside him going limp even before the drugs hit him. When the drugs do hit him a few moments later, the ringing in his ears increasing, he feels a laugh bubble up within his chest. Evan grins at him sloppily and Rich gives him a conniving look.

"Would you like to take part in the _fun_ Danny. There'll be more of that."

Danny just laughs, his mirth uninterrupted even when Rich shoves his lips into his face, tearing savagely at his lip. Danny laughs as Evan opens Danny's pants and begins going to work on his cock as Rich cuts into his lips.

Later, while he is fucking Evan, who has Rich in his mouth, Danny takes another hit from the pipe and wonders at how the world can ebb and flow just with the influx of chemicals in his body. It feels wonderful, he decides. He never wants to be any other way. This is living.

The next morning he leaves before anyone gets up, shame twisting a hole through his sternum and a weight forming in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

For all the times Danny tells himself to _slow down_ , inevitability the anxiety and regret that comes with sobriety would cause him to seek out another hit within a few hours of making that resolution.

Slowing down wasn't happening anytime soon. He hadn't overdosed yet but he was on the clock for sure.

Danny wasn't scared at all. He probably should be.

Danny just didn't care.

"What's all this?" Danny asks as he enters his flat to find his meager belongings tossed into garbage bags by the door.

"We warned you that you'd be gone if you went another month without the rent."

"It's only been a couple months."

"It's been four months, Danny. We warned you when it was two."

He looks at the two people in front of him. He looks at the garbage bags. "Where am I supposed to go?"

"I don't know, you always seem to find _someplace_ to sleep for the night, Danny, just go work your magic again."

"The magic is a bit stinted when I'm walking around carrying fucking garbage bags." He isn't angry, even though he should be. In the pit of his stomach he'd known this was coming for awhile. Besides, the heroin twisting through his veins is calming him, making everything move honey thick through his vision, their words wading through molasses. The words are scripted, and he's just reading the next line.

"Fucking fine," he lashes out, grabbing the two bags in front of him. "Fine, I'm gone."

He turns to leave but looks back as one of the flat mates, Roberta, calls. "Danny…" Danny turns, glaring at her.

"You're better than this. If you… if you clean up, come call again."

Danny doesn't know whether to be angry, grateful, sad, or apathetic. He feels all of them whirl inside his chest, mixing with the others, producing feelings akin to _guilt_ and _shame_. Danny sighs, hauling his bags into the hallway, turning back to his old flat mates.

"Don't expect it."

* * *

An hour later Danny is sitting at the bar of the swanky restaurant with the live entertainment, his bags tucked safely into a corner of the alley nearby. He doesn't quite know what brought him to _this_ bar of all the goddamn bars in London, like he has the fucking money for these fruity cocktails. He'd already spent forty quid on enough pills and dope for a fabulous binge night ahead of him, so ten quid for a fucking sex on the beach was bleeding ridiculous.

Probably, he was here for the rich men again. Because there was nothing more comforting than being taken home by a rich man, where the sex would likely be comfortable and the money he could get from the exchange would be enough to find a hostel room for the next week or so.

How in the fuck did he get here?

As he takes a last swig of his cocktail, Danny feels someone move up behind him. He turns, only to be greeted by that elder man from last time. Didn't remember his name. How long had it been, months?

"Well, I certainly didn't expect to see you again, Danny." He held his hand out. "Scottie… it's okay," he responds to Danny's expression. "It's hard to remember things when you're a bit out of it. And I'm terribly good at names anyways, so comparison to me isn't entirely fair."

Danny stared at him as Scottie placed twenty quid on the counter and ordered two more sex on the beaches. "Why don't you join me, Danny?"

Danny nods, only because if he's going to be taken home, at least he sort of already knew the guy.

"How… How'd you know I'm out of it?" he whispers to Scottie as they sit down in the same seat tucked in the back as last time. It's true he'd insufflated a bit of cocaine before arriving, but certainly not enough to be an issue for him acting properly.

"The same way I knew you were craving drugs last time I saw you. You druggies are terribly predictable, wear your heart and desires on your sleeve."

Danny crosses his arms, leaning back on the chair. He wants to retaliate, say that he isn't a druggie and Scottie is wrong, but the problem is everything is right right right, he is a junkie and a whore who only knows how to make himself feel better through external pleasures, and _god_ he can feel tears pricking on the edge of his vision now. He blinks.

Scottie leans forward.

"So Danny, what brings you here on this evening?"

Danny ruffles his hair. What was the harm in telling this old man? Worst that could happen was that he is even more open to having some almost-twenty junkie in his house for the evening.

"I was kicked out of my place. For good. I've missed rent for the past four months, I knew it was coming, but I thought they'd give me time to find a place…"

"Where'd the rent money go?" Scottie pries, still leaned forward slightly, the action wavering between interested and predatory. Danny recoils slightly, but then realizes that this was the point, yes, being picked up by this man. It was just odd seeing such body language in an elderly man, but they have libidos too, yes. He drinks heavily from his cocktail. Well, if he's going to start fucking old men he'd need to down one of those pills he'd bought soon.

"I spent it on other things. More… tangible things."

"Drugs." It isn't a question.

"Mmmm," Danny hums, trying to make the lilt of his tone seductive. Was Scottie trying to make him feel guilty? Well, it was working if he was. He took another sip of the cocktail, the depressant mixing caustically with the stimulants whirling in his system. He sighed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. He just wants to go to the bathroom, take one of the pills, fuck Scottie if he has to and take the rest of his stash. Get some money and find a hostel. Easy. Now, how to get Scottie out of the bar?

"Danny, I barely know you, so I don't expect you to listen, but please understand that you can do a lot better."

Danny snaps back to look at Scottie across the table. His high is rising, and as it does he feels an acerbic laugh jump up his throat. "I'm not so sure I can." It's honest even though Danny is masking it behind callousness, which breaks him a little, as he sees Scottie's eyes fall.

"Danny, you can do a lot better than trying to pick up wealthy men in bars so you can spend it on a drug habit. Yes," he responds to Danny's look, "of course I know what you're doing here. The thing is, I know you're also not this person. You have empathy, you have a heart, and no matter how much you try to bury it underneath reckless actions and careless mistakes, you will always have it. Perhaps you try to shirk it away because it hurt you once. Perhaps someone tried to beat it out of you. But when you told that other, much more attractive man to leave when we first met, I knew that this was not a person who feels nothing. This is a person who feels _everything_."

Danny drains his cocktail and stands up. "You're wrong, Scottie. You're wrong." He wasn't going to sit here while some elder man he didn't know played Freud on him, not whilst his pockets were shoved full of enough drugs to keep him warm and occupied while he spent a night on the street. He would be fine, he would pick up his bags and go to a park and he'd be fine. Much better than listening to this man lecture.

"You're an open book, Danny. And you're honest. It's a rare combination, and admirable as well."

Danny turns to go but Scottie catches his wrist. He places a stack of bills into his hand. "Find a hostel, think about it."

Danny leaves, not even his pride could keep him from taking a much needed handout from this pompous ass. "Thanks," he mumbles before he stalks out of the bar, moving to the alley to get his trash bags.

* * *

The hostel room is small but a single, and with all the stimulants he's taken Danny _swears_ it's much smaller than it is. The walls seem to be shrinking in towards him, boxing him in, taunting him as he dry swallows another of his pills. His foot taps lithely against the ground. Danny can feel his mind speeding up and up, faster and faster, the high increasing in velocity and acceleration, but he knows that if he keeps taking more, if he speeds up fast enough he will get to the point where he breaks through the sound barrier, where the rocking and shaking he's feeling will even out into a soundless wave, going so fast that motion slows down. He closes his eyes, waiting for the plane to stop shaking.

There's a man sitting behind him on the bed, hands folded quietly in his lap, watching Danny predatorily. He's the first of many, Danny presumes as he leans back in the wood chair the room was graced with and closes his eyes as the ringing in his ears reaches a crescendo. A response to the ad he's placed online in the small lounge in the hostel, equipped with one online computer. One of his most impulsive actions, to be sure, but he was feeling absolutely _dangerous_ tonight, his high and his anxiety vibrating in his throat, shooting through his veins. He wanted to be met with his demons, to look someone in the eye and know he can't escape and can't even say a word.

He launches himself off the chair and moves towards the man on the bed. Their lips meet in a savage, lurching kiss as Danny sways slightly from the motion. The man flips him over and begins tearing at his skin, his clothes, his hair, and Danny almost laughs at the rigid pain except that would break their contract, wouldn't it, and he can't do that.

It lasts a total of five minutes, and without the necessary warm up it leaves Danny sore in places he'd rather not acknowledge. As the man leaves, Danny moves towards his stash again and doses off a fingernail of white powder from a baggie before snorting it back. The upper burns his nostrils and drips caustically down the back of his throat, and because he's alone and he can, Danny laughs to himself as his head rushes further into the clouds.

The next knock at his door is a couple, a woman clutching anxiously onto the man's hand as Danny leads them into the room. It's quite pleasurable actually, hearing both the woman and the man make small moans of pleasure as he rotates between them, her fingernails raking down his bag, his rough hands in his hair. He almost wants to start a conversation but they leave just as soon as they finish, as he sits on the ground still mesmerized by the spinning world around him.

A small group of men come in next. It makes Danny nervous just looking at him because the look in their eyes reminds him sharply of Rich and their muscular tones remind him of one of his previously violent lovers. They're rough and cruel, leaving rug burns all along his body and red marks across his skin, taking turns from behind while the others assail him or taunt or laugh. It's embarrassing and demeaning and Danny nearly cries out when the knots of his hair are wrenched upwards and his neck snaps back further than it should go, his tongue lolling out slightly before one of the men shoves themself inside. When they leave he curls up on the bed, letting the waves of kinetic energy inside him smooth out the pain that he feels externally.

He finishes off his stash around four in the morning, and as he watches from his window the red-orange sun lifting over the grey, dingy rooftops of London, the last of the drugs drying up maudlinly in his veins, Danny begins to laugh. He howls, the laughter bubbling up from the hook lodged within his sternum and the lead fishing line attached to his spine. He shakes with mirth, shakes with the drugs and the bruises and the sex, shakes with the shame and the guilt, and as soon as he finds himself running out of laughter he is shocked to find tears streaming down his face. His chest concaves on itself, collapsing into a pile of cinders and smoke as Danny wraps his arms around himself, falling forward into his own embrace. The howling turns into deep sobs as the reality of _what he's done_ weighs down on him. The soaring high of earlier crashes into a disgusting grime that covers his skin, ants crawling just under his epithelial layer.

Danny doesn't want to acknowledge what he looks like in the mirror, nor does he want to think about how many drugs he took or the amount of unprotected sex he just had or the fact that he doesn't have a _home_ , and not just in the literal sense of not having an apartment. His home died along with his mother and began decomposing with each belting he received from his father.

Right now, he is more interested in just having everything _stop_ , in pricking himself up into another high where he won't have to _think_ and _feel_.

Except, that won't help anything, he acknowledges, if he got high today he would still have to deal with everything tomorrow. He's been putting off sitting down with his demons for too long, and now they've met him here in a seedy hostel bathed in the cold light of morning. He's junk sick and in pain, and he feels so, _so_ worthless, like garbage made to be used and tossed away. And he _doesn't know what to do_.

All of him is aching to find another alley with another closet dealer who will allow Danny to get to his knees for enough to take this _pain_ away. But he's been running for so long. He had to do something today. Except Danny is too tired and too distraught to do much of anything right now. Can't even _breathe_ properly for Christ's sake.

 _You deserve better._

Hadn't Scottie said that just last night before Danny had gone and fucked himself over? And at the time it hadn't made so much sense, because when you feel like the dirt beneath everyone's feet it's easy enough to have strangers treat you as such and think that you deserve it. Hadn't that been his motto for a while now? Yet as Danny sat there, skin crawling, throat closing as his eyes leaked tears he had been suppressing for months underneath broken laughter, he realized that he may not think he necessarily deserved better, but he could at least acknowledge that he _wanted_ better.

And that started with trying to actually get better.

Danny still isn't entirely cognizant of his actions as he picks up his dingy mobile phone and pulls the tatty business card out of his pocket, but as he dials the number stamped in gold lettering against the crisp white paper he begins to feel a small weight move off his chest.

It's early, but Scottie picks up after the third ring.

"Good morning, yes, this is Scottie."

Danny clears his throat, swiping an arm across his running nose as he attempts to calm his voice down enough to be coherent.

"Hi Scottie, this is, uh, Danny? From the bar? Yeah, I…" and here he stops because he can't keep it in any longer, a sob breaks through his already throaty explanation and he claps a hand over his mouth as he shakes. Taking a few breaths to calm himself he begins again.

"I've been thinking about what you said last night, and I… I need help."

There is a brief silence on the other line, which terrifies Danny to the core. Would he be ridiculed, tossed back on the streets, sent vagranting around and sucking off dealers in alleys just to stay warm tonight? Be thrown away like the filthy whore he is, a betrayal of his own bleak opinions of himself.

"Danny, what can I do to help?" the elder man intones across the connection.

Danny's heart skips a beat as he covers his mouth as sobs, this time of relief, shatter his sternum. He swipes at his eyes as he turns his gaze to the sunset outside.

"I've… I've really fucked up Scottie. I…" he shrugs as words fail. "I don't know what to do."

"Where are you?"

Danny rattles off the address of the hostel.

"I will be there as soon as possible." Scottie says, deep rumbling from the other end as it sounds like a coat is being put on.

Danny nods, even though he knows his affirmation can't be seen, and clicks his phone off.

He turns towards the window, the sunlight just turning pink as the white tendrils of light spread across London. Danny doesn't laugh now, can feel no mirth as his emotions catch up to him in a seedy hostel. What Danny does do is force himself to get up, get dressed, wash his face and toss the remains of his debaucherous night. The first step to feeling better is looking better.

Scottie meets him on the curb in a well-kept old sports car. He opens the car door for Danny, the anachrony of the car and the man clashing with his sweaty, thin, taut appearance.

The beginning of the ride is silent as Danny tries to keep from stammering. After a few minutes Scottie turns to him, his face guarded yet friendly.

"So, young Danny, won't you please tell me about yourself?"

And Danny, who hasn't spoken a word of personal business to _anyone_ since Andrew had hit him in the woods all those years ago and his mother had passed away a few months later in the living room of their small rented house, found himself telling Scottie _everything._ And Scottie, for his part, listened as Danny, pausing every now and then as he choked on his words, told him about his father and his abuse, about the English teacher he had fucked right after graduation, about ending up in hospital when his father had found him, about Andrew and his mother and the drugs and every seedy man and woman he had had sex with for no reason other than not trying to _feel_ like _too much_. When he finishes, the car loitering in Scottie's parking lot for twenty minutes before his tale is complete, Scottie turns the car off and leans back in the chair. He fixes Danny, who is breathless and _scared_ with an intense stare.

"Danny, my boy, you don't just deserve so much more. You _need_ so much more."

And Danny, the light of morning shining across his face, tinting his hair a dark auburn, smiles for the first time he can remember.


End file.
